Friday, 25 December 2009

Revit MEP 2009 ~ Workshare ~ Posted 09 January 2009One video from the MEP 2009 Tutorial Series of over 180 lessons. Just like Revit Architecture 2009, this is a series of screen recording lessons by an Autodesk certified Instructor.

Revit Architecture 2010 ~ Families Intro. ~ Posted 22 July 2009Chris Fox introduces families in one of the 270 lessons which make up the CADLearning tutorial series for users of the Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010. More info. at http://member.cadlearning.com/

Revit Structure 2010 ~ Beam Joins ~ Posted 23 September 2009One video from our series of 222 professional tutorials for users of Autodesk Revit Structure 2010. Available online, on cd/dvd and in our private hosted eLearning centers for business and education. http://www.cadlearning.com/.

Thursday, 24 December 2009

.It's Christmas Eve and Jason Grant of Archin3D has uploaded an Add-In for Revit that will help you more quickly create sheets with significantly less clicks. In fact, it somewhat provides a solution for #10 of the AUGI Revit Wishlist given to Autodesk this year at AU2009.

Sunday, 20 December 2009

I wanted to send a greeting but it is so difficult in today's world to know exactly what to say without offending someone.

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, nonaddictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practised with the most enjoyable traditions of religious persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make our country great, not to imply that the United Kingdom (apologies to those of a republican persuasion) is necessarily greater than any other country, and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms:

This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher. Disclaimer:

No trees were harmed in the sending of this message; however, a significant number of electrons were slightly inconvenienced.
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Friday, 18 December 2009

Learn how BIM solutions can be effectively utilised on renovation and refurbishment projects and the benefits that can be achieved by doing so.

When we think of using a BIM solution such as Revit Architecture we initially think of new build projects and the benefits and savings we may achieve by creating a virtual model of the proposed design. If however, we are asked to refurbish an existing building our enthusiasm for using this solution may be hampered by issues such as:

No existing building model

Only 2D drawings are available

The perceived requirement to create a detailed model of the existing building before any work on a proposed refurbishment can take place

Through this webinar we will demonstrate the ways in which Revit can effectively be utilised on these types of projects, and discuss some of the ways in which we can achieve additional benefits from taking this approach.

We will examine the integration of existing 2D CAD data as the basis of a Revit solution. We will show how project phasing and design options can be utilised to communicate our proposals to all interested parties. We will discuss the modelling requirements for energy performance analysis on an existing building in order to compare the results with our proposals, and the tools available to us.

We will also present a case study demonstrating how Revit has been used successfully in such a project: James Austin from _space group will discuss his experiences with using Revit on a demanding refurbishment project.

Tuesday, 15 December 2009

.Since my last posting about Topo Surfaces and looking at water and flooding, we seem to be having more lengthy discussions with the Environmental Agency these days with regards to flooding in conjunction with global warming and climate change.

One assumes that they obtain levels from the OS Maps and or aerial photographs to build such models. Using Revit we are able to model the Existing and Proposed sites and show them more accurately the flood pattern for different levels of water.

We can also provide them with volumes of water held on the site.

The client can see to what extent his building is at risk from flooding.

I’ve just emailed the Technical Staff at work about holding a weekly or fortnightly Lunchtime session where we can run some of the Virtual sessions and screen casts, so far it look like 95% of them are up for it!

The main problem I see with the screen casts is the extremely poor quality of the sound recordings. The Virtual sessions are a much better quality (after they fixed the poor sound quality on a few of the early sessions)

If Autodesk learn anything from this years AU, I hope it’s to find better sound engineers and to create far more virtual sessions, for later downloading by users who want save the planet, or just can’t afford to travel to Las Vegas.
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Wednesday, 9 December 2009

The Excitech Revit Toolkit is a series of modular applications and extensions for the Revit 2010 Platform. The first extension addresses the scheduling of coordinates, with particular focus on creating piling schedules and is FREE to all..

This has been a major problem to anyone who needs to create a piling schedule, in the past having to rely on AutoCAD which takes the information out of the Revit environment and essentially creates an unconnected 2D drawing and schedule.

Wednesday, 2 December 2009

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I was very keen to attend the virtual session by Steve Stafford, Autodesk Revit Collaboration: Shared Coordinates for Projects Big and Small.

I watched Tour of the AU Virtual Player with Lynn Allen and got computer checked over to ensure that I had all the software installed to make it happen. Due to the time zone difference the 1pm presentation at AU2009 is 9pm at night here in the UK.

I made myself a cup of coffee and settled down for a little bit of late night CPD (Continuing Professional Development).

My internet speed was great for that time of night, there was no buffering going on and Steve started his presentation, then after a few minutes the sound became very distorted and it just got worse and worse, until in the end I just had to give up on it.

Steve had pre-recorded the session and was watching it with us, then spent most of his time answering questions about the poor sound quality and kept apologising and saying that it would be fixed for the later session and uploaded.

It would not surprise me to read a Twitter report that a Sound Engineer has been assaulted or lynched at AU2009!

Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Amber Johnson sent me a link to a great resource called “101 Useful YouTube Tutorials for College Students” having two daughters, one just completing 6th form and heading to University and the other about to enter 6th form I think its a great resource and worthy of posting here...

While these videos all offer serious advice for adjusting to college, some of them are done with humor, Enjoy.

Sunday, 22 November 2009

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With a mind to all things BIM, LEED, BREAAM, Sustainable and planet saving, here is a Greenpeace ad that makes its point pretty well! Made by Park Village London for Escape Partners. Directed by Sven Harding.

It seems to have been around for some time but I only got to see it yesterday.

Unfortunately these energy saving bulbs have toxic heavy metals in them. Some say they are very harmful to our environment and dangerous if one breaks in a room (releasing harmful vapours). There were lots of concerns raised about how to handle and dispose of these bulbs safely for a couple of weeks in the papers and on the television then nothing more was ever said about it!

Back to the ad, I love the look on the guys face right at the end, and the bike is a killer. I hate the new bulbs, and now our old bulbs are no longer legal to produce.

Saturday, 21 November 2009

The Autodesk® Subscription Advantage Pack for Autodesk® Revit® Structure 2010 offers a variety of enhancements, features, and applications to extend the capabilities of Autodesk® Revit® Structure 2010 software. Productivity-enhancing features and functionalities better support structural analysis, modeling, concrete reinforcement, interoperability, and construction documentation while improved tools help you to work more efficiently within the software. With the new Subscription Advantage Pack also brings new and improved Revit Structure Extensions. Interferences of Reinforcing Bars This extension helps detect interferences of reinforcing bars in an Autodesk Revit Structure project. The detection applies to a concrete element selection or the whole model.

Being an old fart, and someone who used pre MS-DOS machines, and DOS Versions of AutoCAD, I know that ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is the standard format used for text files within computers and online.

As computers can only understand numbers, the ASCII code is the numerical representation of alphabetic and special characters, such as

If you know the keystroke value of the special character you want to insert, you can insert the special character directly into your document by using your keyboard.

To do so, open the document and position the cursor where you want the special character to appear. Then, with NUM LOCK on, press and hold the ALT key, and then press the keys on the numeric keypad that represent the keystroke value of the character you want to input.

After you finish typing, release the ALT key, and Windows generates the character you specified.

Perhaps the next version of Revit will give us direct control for Superscript, subscript and symbols with Text line AutoCAD has had for some time.

Saturday, 14 November 2009

I have been contacted by Amida Recruitmentwho have the following opening:-"Amida Recruitment have an urgent vacancy with a high profile engineering consultancy in London for a Structural Technician who is an AutoCAD power used with Revit experience. You will be responsible for producing 3D structural drawings for steel and concrete structures. You will need... previous experience working for a consultancy, be familiar with structural design and have the ability to discuss design problems with Structural Engineers. Experience producing 3D structural drawings using Revit is essential. You must have experience using Revit in a working context not just have trained in it. This is an urgent role so please contact us immediately to avoid disappointment."

Thursday, 5 November 2009

The covering description to these videos is “Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010 guide - how to complete small house documentation with multimedial presentation.” But being based in Bratislava the term multimedia obviously does not include sound as these are silent videos!.

A bit like finding a foreign film on the television late at night after being out for a beer and a curry and watching it because you can kind of understand the plot and you want to see how it ends, you find yourself drawn into skipping and fast forwarding through these just to see how the non award winning building (multi occupancy shoe box) is developed by the designer (let’s not give them the title of Architect).

Saturday, 31 October 2009

Revit - Creating Exploded Isometric Views ~12 August 2009 (Low Volume on this Video)This technique covers step-by-step how to split a building into slices, in this case horizontal, but vertical sections would also be effective. You can use this technique for many purposes, to illustrate the separate systems which make up a building, to show a detail in 3D, or just to create the traditional

You are here maps, ubiquitous in the shopping mall world. Hopefully this gives you some new presentation techniques, or if you havent used Revit 2010 yet, Ill help you find the orient to view tool.

Revit - Working with Backgrounds ~ 13 August 2009Working with background images in Revit Architecture is not difficult, if you know some basic techniques.Revit does not support background images directly, but does allow background effects.

This video explores the possiblities within Revit, and what you can do with the images post-process in image-editing software. What better way to integrate your project site context, or insert your project into otherwordly locales; 3ds Max not required.

Revit - Entourage Workflow ~ 14 August 2009If you want to concurrently work in Revit for creating construction documents, and visualizations, you must learn to separate logically. Digital entourage such as RPC content, or people cars and trees can coexist in your building information model.

This video shows how you can use worksets to contain elements you do not want visible in all views.

Listed below are the Revit Structure and Architecture Tips & Tricks Videos and Documents I’ve found on the CADLine web site. I will be returning to their site and updating the list below on a regular basis, however I’ve placed links to the pages this information came from so that you can check for more up to date content.

In addition you can register for the CADline Revit Tips & Tricks Newsletter using this link

The purpose of the following Revit Structure Tips & Tricks videos is to enhance your skills and share with you solutions to problems that other users experience. CADlines Tips and Tricks are created from the top 30 support calls logged with their support desk.

Click on the relevant title below to view a Revit Structure Tip & Trick video.

The purpose of the following Revit Architecture Tips & Tricks videos is to enhance your skills and share with you solutions to problems that other users experience. Their Tips and Tricks are created from the top 30 support calls logged with their support desk.

Click on the relevant title below to view a Revit Architecture Tips & Tricks video.

Friday, 30 October 2009

"We know that the advertising is already published on Subscription Center. However the advantage pack will be available only on the 23rd of November 2009.We are really sorry for the confusion.

Have a good day!

Best RegardsKelly HauserAutodesk Business Center"

The Pack also needs to be translated into other EMEA languages (French, Italian, German, etc.) and that’s why the local office wants to launch all the EMEA languages (English, French, Italian, German, etc.) all together at the same date.

Lets hope by then all the bugs and missing content has also been totally fixed!.

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

I went to complete the application and found that you need your product licence or Subscription number or reference in order to register for free.... so be warned.

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I sent the nice people at Autodesk University Registration Team an email because there was no "United Kingdom" option and to complete the form I had to select some other country. The message went:-

"Logging In OK I can’t register because I’m filling in the form at home and don’t have my serial number or my Subscription Number Drat…….

But at least add the “United Kingdom” to your list of countries!!!!

You know the little one that was involved in WW2 the one you guys joint right at the end when you were about to loose all the money you had lent us.

Lets try tomorrow from work…… Ho Hummmm "

A nice lady on the Autodesk University Registration Team replied within an hour that my details had been altered and Great Britain (United Kingdom) had been added to the list.

To protect the innocent lets call this lady Liz after our own dear Queen. I've emailed Liz back here is an extract:-

Liz (That's not really her name)

You are a 100% Star what can I say………

A lump in the throat, a tear in the eye….(“Land of Hope and Glory” playing in the background somewhere)

“Great Britain” my god it’s been some time since we have been known as Great. Actually I’m English anyone can be British these days you know?

When I was a Kid we went into Class and there was this Big Map of the World on the wall and most of it was Pink, “ that Children is the British Empire and members of the Commonwealth" the Teacher would say.

"Ohhhhhh" we all replied in unison.

As I can’t be there in person perhaps we can meet at the Virtual Meeting?"

I may have just arranged my first internet cyber date!(God lets hope the wife is not reading the Blog....).

Batten down the hatches -Revit 2010~ 31 July 2009A guide to Revit 2010 frequently encountered questions. This video is intended to discuss commonly reported and discussed issues with the Revit 2010 family of products.

Investigating Product Stability Issues with Revit ~ 21 September 2009This video describes how to troubleshoot and resolve product stability problems like crashes with Revit products. Starting with the questions to ask and ending with the possible resolutions, this video focus on the 3 areas that are the most common causes of crashes within Revit

Monday, 26 October 2009

Discover the power of the Autodesk solution for structural engineering. Through a series of seven chapters, this screencast demonstrates how Autodesk provides an unmatched portfolio that enables structural engineers to extend their workflow from design through fabrication and construction. For a preview click here

Thursday, 22 October 2009

Bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6am this morning I was downloading the Advantage Pack. I had to go to site first thing and when I returned mid day one could not get onto the Autodesk Subscription page to download.

So you ask why did I need to go back on to the Subscription Centre having already harvested all the good stuff in the morning. Well when I did get into the office I tried running the RST 2010 32 bit Advantage Pack and got this Error message.

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I’m not alone, one other individual on the AUGI web site has posted with the same problem and his also in the UK and he could also not get onto the subscription page to look for guidance or a solution to the problem.

Either there are not many RST users out there or we Structures guys are just less vocal but just now there are 42 posts about the upgrade on AUGI Revit Architecture General Forum and only 10 on Structures General ( And I’ve posted 3 of them!)

Finally I asked Scott Latch ~ Revit Architecture Product Manager to get Wai to let us know whats going on ~ His posting on AUGI says

“Hi Alan and all (UK users),

Sorry for the delay as I am still a bit tied up the launch of the Subscription Advantage Pack issues and yes since this morning I have discussed with the development team about this issue and we are trying to fix it now. We are working to release a new patch or build in the next couple of days to solve this issue. Once it's available, I will let all of you know.”

So there you have it…….. they build you up ....... then knock you down.

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Next time make it two days later, but work first time.

Bad news for you Revit Architecture Users Too

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Although you have the structural tools now the content to back them up is missing! - Scott Latch has posted that his lookinig into the problem.. keep an eye here for more info

.Wai Chu Product Manager for Revit Structure has just officially announced on AUGI and his Blog that the Subscription Advantage Pack for Autodesk Revit Structure 2010 is now available at the Subscription Center.

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Well Boys and Girls following on from the video conference I’ve just attended with the Revit Product team, here are the highlights of what is going to be included in the Subscription Advantage Pack for Revit 2010.

Rather than releasing separate extensions like they have done in the past, Autodesk have bundled these all up as a complete release with a number of new features which is due October 22 (2 Days time if all goes well)

improvements include:-

Enable shortcuts for additional commands

Additional shortcut commands

A new UI to control the shortcuts

Conditional formatting in all products

DWG export improvements

Text formatting – from shortcuts

Find and replace text

Model lines to Detail lines and back

Link file improvements

API improvements

Autodesk Revit Model Review

Revit DBlink

Image modeler will now be included so you can create point cloud data from images and

export this to DWG and import this into Revit

Wood Wall Framing tool

Revit Architecture gets all the features they wanted from a Revit Structure Port:

Curved beams

Beam copping

Create Trusses

Tag beam systems

Slab directions and decking

Slanted columns

Split with Gap

Revit Structure advantage features will also include:-

Insulation tool

Placing 3d beams from geometry references in imported 3d drawings

Control beam length tolerance

Wood Framing

Interferences of Reinforcing bars

Bridge Design Modules

"A" ansd "W" User defined parameters to be available in Schedule Field

Placing 3D beams from geometry references in imported 3D drawings

Countrification Content for China, Russia and Italy

ADS now available in 64 bit

Structure Extensions

Wood Framing

Interference of Reinforcing Bars

Bridge Design Modules

Revit MEP advantages features will also include:-

Temporary dimensions in layout mode

MEP performance improvements

Content Countrification for China, Russia,UK, International

New Electrical content for the US to be available as download from Subsription Centre

Last week I received a Revit Blogger Day Invitation from Autodesk Marketing to attend a small web event between members of the Revit product team and a handful of active Revit bloggers.

Autodesk are preparing to release new Revit functionality to Subscription members and have extend the invitation to a handful of active Revit bloggers to have the opportunity to get a pre-release look at the functionality.

The web meeting /teleconference is being held using Adobe Connect to host the web conference.

I had never heard of this particular product but found a tutorial about it’s use on YouTube from a Google search (don’t you just love Google and YouTube)

There is no NDA for this event, and I’ve been informed that once the presentation starts, I’m welcome to blog about it (or tweet, etc). Thus this posting timed to post at the start of the web meeting / teleconference.

We have been asked not to recording the presentation and posting it to YouTube. The content that has been created is intended for active bloggers and not the broader audience.

Only functionality that’s being released in the upcoming Subscription Advantage Pack is to be discussed at the meeting.

So keep your eyes open, once the meetings over in about an hour and a half, active bloggers will post about the highlights of the upcoming Subscription Advantage Pack. I will upload information about the meeting and what's coming as soon as I've completed typing it up.
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Saturday, 17 October 2009

It would appear that although many of these issues have been raised some time ago, they have still not been properly resolved by “The Factory”.

Drawing hidden lines is a basic drawing requirement, and this should be available in the basic formation of the 3D model and not have to be added on the Plan, Section or Elevation as additional 2D lines.

For slab opening edges (hidden lines) of holes in floors and slabs not showing up on sections and sectional elevations see http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=108409....-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For hidden lines on plan of doors and windows not showing up in walls and how users have developed work around and fudges to provide what is basically missing from Revit see http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=71267

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here is a posting about showing the hidden lines on plan of an anti-heave slab thickening, in the original posting the lines at 45 degrees from the corners were missing and the image was updated. Again this is a temporary fiddle and not a real fix to the problem which should be addressed by The Factory

Erik Egbertson post says "First, rest assured there are continual efforts to improve machine performance. Despite this we often receive models that have specific issues that can be fixed or modeled in an alternative way that mitigates the problem. Sometimes the results are dramatic. There is also a wealth of existing knowledge out there on how to improve performance that could be captured and shared.

Imagine then an audit tool that can run on demand against a project file. The tool would iterate through the Revit project and report on conditions that exist within a file that are known to harm file performance"

He is looking for feedback, visit, read and tell him we want it..........

Monday, 12 October 2009

As I surf my way around the internet and find tips and trick, articles, blog postings about Family Creation in Revit that may be useful I'm adding links to them here as a reference resource-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Inside the Factory ~ Familiy Editor Tips

This season at the Boston Architectural College we started an advanced class to get into more topics such as design options and advanced modeling. The family editor also gets more attention to cover topics such as nesting, parameter linking, type parameters etc..

I thought I would just post some tips and tricks/best practices here for those who are just getting started in the Family Editor. I encourage other experienced "Reviteers" to contribute as well...... "and they have lots of good advice to be found here"

-9.2 - Create New Family (Fundamentals)Create a new family from scratch, and apply your own parameters to it. The basics are covered in this video by creating a simple generic 3-d box, and creating parameters for its width, height, and depth.

Andekan ~ New Revit Content Starter PacksThe Andekan Content Packs contain a collection of state-of-the-art, fully parametric Revit families. They are built to speed up your work and improve the quality of your projects by using geometrically precise and light-weight models.

The four new Revit Content Starter Packs, feature over a thousand of the most popular products from manufacturers like Tyler, Zurn, Victaulic, IKEA, Grunfos, Halton, Quartz, Trane, VentAxia, American Standard, Nibco and Smith. There is a free sample family for download on each pack..Click here to learn more

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

I have found that getting the formatting of pages with multiple graphics on this blog very time consuming and frustrating. (I've now added the guidance note as three jpg's to the foot of this posting)

If you would like an Adobe pdf copy of the Guidance Note I've created for the Revit Users at work about how to form a rebate around an opening in a slab then please email me and I will happily send you a copy.

I asked that if anyone from Autodesk was looking (and I know they do, because it shows up on my sitemeter information) for them to "please email me with some answers to my observations and questions"

In the posting in May, I also said I would let you know when anything appears!

Well it has.....Harian Brumm of The Revit Clinic Blog has posted that the new skill builder: Working with Title blocks and Sheets in Revit is available. The link take you to the Revit Architectural Skill Builders Page but it's also been uploaded to the Revit Structures Skill Builders Page...

It's the only thing there!

Take a look at what is on the Revit Architecture Services & Support compaired to the Revit Structures area on the screen shots above.

Come on Autodesk..... give the Revit Structures users the same level of support that you do to Revit Architecture users.

One article which some nice person has decided is applicable to Revit Structure as well as Revit Architecture is frankly pathetic and "I don't beelieeve it!

And in the spirit of Victor "Come on Autodesk, for God sake stop sitting on your hands, with your thumbs up your bums, and support your bloody Revit Structure users ".

Wednesday, 30 September 2009

The Update can be applied to all languages of Revit Structure. Currently, only the English download page has the update, but the other language download pages will be available by the middle of next month. Until then users with other languages can download the update from the English page.Please note, the update release does not contain any new functionality. However, we are developing functionality enhancements that will be available to Subscription customers in the near future."

When you follow the link it's a wee bit confusing because the page has a typo - it says Web Update 1 but the Web Update 2 files are there under where it says Update 1..